Cultural Dessert

Friday, August 19, 2016

'Guilt Trip' by Katherine Jakeways, Felicity Montagu and Olivia Nixon

19 August 2016

‘Guilt Trip’ is a great example of the kind of gentle, funny, clever and moving comedy drama that BBC Radio 4 does so well. This four-part series, which finished this week, stars Felicity Montagu and her real-life daughter Olivia Nixon as mother and daughter Ros and Laura who are walking the Thames path, from the source of the river to Tower Bridge, to raise money for charity in memory of Laura’s father (Ros’s ex-husband) who has recently passed away. Thrown together for two weeks of strenuous physical exercise, the pair make a great odd-couple and their episodic encounters with a range of characters along the river path are reminiscent of the meandering stories of ‘Three Men in a Boat’. ‘Guilt Trip’ is written by Katherine Jakeways (who also appears as Laura’s stepmother, Ruth) with Felicity Montagu and Olivia Nixon. All four episodes are still available to listen to for the next seven days at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07mhzqx/episodes/player

Friday, August 12, 2016

'Stranger Things' by The Duffer Brothers

12 August 2016

I’m a recent convert to Netflix, joining the online streaming service just in time to watch the gripping new sci-fi/horror serial ‘Stranger Things’. This eight-part drama, written and directed by the Duffer Brothers and starring Winona Ryder, is a homage to 1980s films such as ‘E.T.’, ‘The Goonies’ and ‘Stand By Me’. It is set in 1983 in a small town in Indiana and starts with the disappearance of a local boy near a mysterious government research establishment. Flickering lights herald the arrival of a monster from an alternative dimension, a child with telekinetic powers and masses of armed suits in transit vans. The focus on a gang of kids on bikes trying to outwit the authorities recalls some of those children’s films, but ‘Stranger Things’ is quite an adult drama. It builds to a truly thrilling climax and, unlike so many modern TV series, actually draws the story to a conclusion – merely hinting at the possibility of a second series, which would be most welcome.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

'Scorched' by Lisle Turner

11 August 2016

‘Scorched’, written by Lisle Turner, produced by Open Sky and playing at Zoo Southside as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, is a play with one actor which deals with themes of ageing, reminiscence and play. We encounter an elderly man watching TV in his living room. As he remembers key incidents from his life he acts them out, using the domestic furniture to represent vehicles and buildings in the same way children often do – emphasising the idea of a ‘second childhood’ in older age. It’s a very impressive physical performance which demonstrates some incredibly inventive stagecraft, including projection, puppetry and animation. I loved the moment when Jack is sitting in his armchair thinking about his time in the army fighting Rommel in the Sahara and remembering having a tattoo on his arm – at which point a projected image appears on his bare upper arm, looking convincingly like a tattoo until it starts to move as an animated cartoon. I also enjoyed the beautiful sculpture created in front of our eyes from sand, sugar and shortbread. But I felt the need for a little more narrative thread to hold the audience’s attention for an hour. And it was a shame that what was clearly a very creative sound design, mixing the soundtrack of the TV programmes Jack is watching with sound effects and voices from his past, was often obscured by the noisy dance show going on in the venue upstairs. Nevertheless ‘Scorched’ is a high quality show which presents an interesting take on ageing and is available, in abridged version, for performance in care homes with associated workshops for residents.

Friday, August 05, 2016

WOMAD 2016

5 August 2016

I had a lovely weekend at the WOMAD Festival at Charlton Park near Malmesbury in Wiltshire. After the rain and mud of 2015, this year’s festival was blessed with almost perfect weather. Although it rained just before I arrived at the festival site on Friday it then stayed dry until I left on Sunday, with a mixture of extremely hot sunshine and some welcome cloud cover. I saw 22 performances from almost every corner of the world. It was great finally to see the Hot 8 Brass Band from New Orleans (who I wrote about here in January 2013) live on stage: from the moment they opened their set with a high tempo version of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Sir Duke’ I knew we were in for a treat. I also enjoyed seeing the charming young Brazilian singer-songwriter/cellist Dom La Nena (“the bossa nova Joanna Newson”), Scottish fiddle and harp duo Twelfth Day with their mixture of traditional and contemporary folk and classical, and Hollie Stephenson – an 18-year-old soul singer from North London with a powerful Amy Winehouse voice.

Long-time readers with good memories may recall my trip to the mountain village of Bitti in Sardinia in 2007, home to the famous singing shepherds, Tenores de Bitti. As I wrote here in June 2007: “the Sardinian canto a tenore tradition is an amazing sound. For centuries shepherds have gathered in mountain huts at the end of the working day to sing to each other (and drink!) through the night. Standing in a circle facing each other, this is very much participatory music – not designed for an audience. The four-part unaccompanied close-harmony singing imitates natural sounds: the bass (‘bassu’) is the sound of a cow, the ‘contra’ is the sound of a sheep and the ‘mesu ‘oche’ is the sound of the wind. Above these the soloist (‘voche’ – the human voice) leads the song and carries the text. The result is harmonically scrunchy, with a very low growlly bass – hypnotically repetitive and remarkably catchy.” It was a great pleasure, therefore, to get my first opportunity to see the tenore tradition live at the WOMAD Festival on Sunday. Cuncordu e Tenore de Orosei is a group that performs both secular tenore songs and the cuncordu religious vocal tradition. The five male singers make a spectacular deep polyphonic sound. They were also just about the least audience-friendly act I have ever seen at WOMAD! True to the traditional Sardinian style they stood in a close circle facing each other, around a single microphone, some way back from the front of the stage. At the end of each song they came out of their circle and stood briefly facing the audience to acknowledge the applause – but with very little attempt to engage the crowd, mostly staring straight ahead with hands in pockets or arms folded. This kind of behaviour only tends to provoke a WOMAD audience into even more vociferously enthusiastic reaction – enjoying the challenge of winning over such seriously unresponsive performers. Sure enough, as the performance progressed, the whooping and cheering of a huge crowd packed in between the trees of the arboretum at Charlton Park, began to elicit a few smiles and bows from the Sardinian singers.

It is hard to pick out a single highlight from a long weekend of live music but I especially liked the remarkable Indo-Scottish MC, Soom T, who really seemed to be enjoying herself on the stage of the Big Red Tent. And I loved the acoustic Canadian folk trio from Prince Edward Island, The East Pointers, whose music was slick, fast, catchy and extremely danceable and reminded me a lot of another Canadian group, The Bills (reviewed here in May 2006).

About Me

Since September 2005 Robin Simpson has been Chief Executive of Voluntary Arts, which provides a universal voice for approximately 63,000 voluntary arts groups, across the UK and Ireland, involving more than 10 million participants in creative cultural activities. A keen amateur French horn player, Robin is currently a member of the Northampton Symphony Orchestra. Robin is a perennial ballroom dancing student, a frequent theatre-goer, an enthusiastic reader of contemporary fiction, an insatiable consumer of classical and world music and a keen blogger at www.culturalplayingfield.org and www.culturaldessert.blogspot.com